Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/76

 shadows, and filled with fish; the grandest caves, the richest mines of precious metals and valuable gems. Rice, the principal article of food among the natives, grows almost spontaneously, and is used on the table at an expense of three cents a pound, while bananas are sold for two cents a dozen and oranges for half a cent each.

It does not cost much to build a little bamboo house after the native fashion. For example, Miss Cort paid for one of her schoolhouses at Petchaburee, fourteen by twenty-two feet, only $6.38 for the materials, including a lock and key; $5.44 for the wages of the men and women who built it—making the entire cost $11.82. But then we should think it a very queer schoolhouse, with its basket-like walls of woven bamboo, its roof of leaves sewed together, its three little windows without any glass, and two doors; nor would its strangeness be less striking if we saw the native teacher and children all sitting on the floor. But things move slowly in these warm Eastern countries. If you want to build a more substantial house, you must begin by buying earth to make the bricks, and oftentimes rough logs to be worked up into boards; and, though labor is cheap, a day's work in Indo-China will not mean anything like as much accomplished as in the same space of time in America.

In the useful arts the inhabitants of this